Multiphase System Testing in Canada for Heavy Oil Applications

Class # 62 -063

Bentley N. Scott, Phase Dynamics, Inc., Tony Hoang, Husky Oil Operations, Ltd.

Abstract Testing of a modern two phase multiphase system was completed over a four month period in Saskatchewan, Canada. This testing included typical steam flood wells using pump jacks and also one SAGD type of well. Some of the technical issues will be discussed with emphasis on the special nature of Canadian production. A description of the technology used, the challenges overcome and the results will be presented.. Introduction In the past, geological and reservoir engineers have focused on interpretation of data obtained by wirelines and other bore hole techniques along with summary production numbers to determine and optimize well production. Most of this information is obtained at a very high cost and can change overnight due to many factors beyond the engineers control. Data such as water or miscible injection rates and production pressures, temperatures, flow rates of oil, water and gas are obtained on a regular basis and are shared among the various engineering groups. This latter data is the day-to-day operational information for evaluation of the production from a given field. The most fundamental information is contained in the well test data. This well test data is typically taken once or twice a month in most fields in the Americas. VISION FROM THE PAST: It is interesting to look at some expectations of prior periods in time. In 1964, the following was stated by George Kite [1]: Various arrangements for three-phase separators are in wide use but are often unnecessarily expensive and complicated; frequently they leave much to be desired insofar as accuracy, operator convenience and adaptability to automation are concerned. The instrumentation system discussed automatically and continuously meters and monitors an oil water stream containing or any combination thereof, and, without physical treating or separation, provides an accurate digital readout of net clean oil volume, directly in barrels. No calculations, conversion factors, or interpretations are required; data are presented instantly, continuously and cumulatively in the most usable form. In addition, electrical digital signals for remote counting and an electrical analog signal for remote percentage water indication or recording are available at the computer terminal block.

Today, the industry is still stating that the current systems are expensive, operator intensive, inaccurate, and difficult to maintain. The proliferation of Seminars, Joint Projects, Conferences and Workshops concentrating on Multiphase Measurement emphasizes the industry is looking for better technology. The perfect solution would be compact, non-intrusive, low pressure drop, accurate, inexpensive and simple to use. This is a good description of what Multiphase Measurement is trying to accomplish. The question is how long it will take to get there and to what specifications and price can each of the markets requiring this withstand. In the meantime, the industry has not yet solved the basic problems which have been plaguing it for 30 years. The following sections will address issues that were seen during the testing and data collection during the pursuit of the comparison between a conventional separator at site and the modern two phase multiphase system. Specific details of what happened at site will be discussed in general terms. Well Testing Issues There are many forms of well testing; tank strapping, three phase separators, two phase separators and now multiphase black box meters. The ideal well test system would be one that could be put anywhere and give accurate, repeatable results for oil, water and gas measurement with no additional back pressure on the well. This system would be flexible enough to be put in any kind of service and be portable enough to be moved from location to location. To date this is not possible due to the extreme range that wells are produced. EQUIPMENT: The equipment may need to be designed for simplicity or complexity depending upon the measurement needs, capital money available and sophistication of the field mehods. Traditionally, the well test system design has been done by sizing and specifying various components of a system. The vessel itself may be purchased from a separator design company with the remainder specified by an engineering company. In too many instances, the designer is twice or further removed from the person specifying the field parameters. In many instances the company designing the equipment will never actually visit the field or talk to the end users of the equipment. This makes the effort very dependent on the communications between the various operating groups and leads to many problems once the equipment is on site. Unfortunately, the well testing systems are often considered secondary to the rest of the engineering efforts. Once the equipment arrives on the site and is commissioned by a third party, the operation is turned over to field production. The result is that the end user must make it work. Different segments of the market require different solutions depending on whether the customer is in the Arctic,

BENTLEY N. SCOTT, TONY HOANG

South America, or the North Sea. The difference may not necessarily be in the technology, but more in the application of technology to the field. Heavy oil vs light oil applications require very different approaches to a well test system. This is due to temperature, viscosity, water cut, gas oil ratio, oil density, water salinity, gas composition (steam), distance of test equipment from the well head, flow stability, and reporting requirements of the operation. In addition, in heavy oil, there are the unique production methods. WISH LIST: Asking questions of various operators, field production personnel, and design companies have led to the following comments about well testing: 1. Reliability and Maintenance Today, fewer technicians are available, higher reliability is required; maintenance must be straightforward and simple to identify problems. Systems must be self diagnosing. 2. Equipment needs to be flexible. Often there is inadequate understanding of the application at the beginning which affects design decisions, selection of equipment, sizes and capabilities. 3. Installation, documentation and support of systems instead of individual components must be offered by vendors. 4. Presentation of data should be concise and pertinent to the operation. 5. Validation of the results and evaluation of methods used are often not consistent with uncertainty or reproducibility. Until the measurement, research, and engineering communities begin to address t hese basic concerns, the industry solution required 30 years ago will still be a dream for tomorrow. The required outcome of a successful well test is not a measurement system but, instead, is the data obtained. How the data was obtained is not important as long as it meets the requirements of the end user of the data. When the requirements in a particular field are studied, many cases can be seen where the range of liquid and gas flow turndowns may exceed typical capabilities of a given design. This is because one site may have new wells and very old ones with varying tertiary methods of recovery. Oil and gas measurements are primary concerns but the water issues should not be forgotten Too often, well testing is not considered important enough to concentrate the up front efforts required to implement a good system. This is surprising since the petroleum company makes its money on efficient use of its resources for production optimization. DATA COLLECTION: Another difference could be in the method of presenting the data to the end user. Each field

may have different computing systems and protocols, the data collection, presentation and storage is not an easy issue to address. Many old systems have no data collection but are manual collection by the operator on paper and then reset of the system for the next well test. The method of data collection may affect the results to a great extent. An example of this is when data is collected through a PLC to a DCS system. The PLC polls the equipment every 1 second, the results are integrated over a 3-5 minute time frame and then the DCS polls the PLC for the data. The graphs available to the operator are only the integrated data points with each point separated by a 3-5 minute period. At the actual equipment it is obvious that the fluids are slugging from 60 m3 to 600 m3 over a 30 to 60 second time frame because the separator is out of control. The 3-5 minute integration is long enough that the data does not show the severe problem that actually exists. In another case, the dump/fill cycle of the separator was only 30-45 seconds and the emulsions went from oil continuous to water continuous and then back to oil continuous. This dramatic change in the fluid properties created considerable problems in the measurement equipment, and separator control. Since the data collection was every minute, extremely long well tests were required to obtain reasonable data. USE OF DATA: The actual proposed use of the well test data is not always specified in the beginning. Whether for field evaluation, development and allocation of production of a new field, process control, and/or payment of taxes, the manner in which the data was obtained is important to the validity of the use of the data for the stated purpose. Field evaluation may only require a +/- 10% uncertainty while fiscal measurement will place much tighter requirements on the design. If the data is obtained by integration over 10 minute intervals, the problems in separator efficiency, slug handling, and level control may not be observable in the data. Conversely, if the data is obtained and displayed on a 5 second interval, most operators would not interpret the data in a favorable light. The perceived operation of a system versus the actual operation is very different in some cases. The rapid changing of data due to fluid characteristics may be interpreted as a problem with the system. Thus, if the same data had been integrated and presented differently, the same operator would believe the system is okay. Although unacceptable to the operator, this fast data may be of much interest to the production engineer or the reservoir engineer since it may shed light on the actual performance of the well, separator and the control system. Data for fiscal use may only be the sum total oil/water/gas production per day with all periods less than one day inconsequential. HARMONY IN MEASUREMENT: Although the selection of the measurement instruments is very important to the uncertainty of the system, the instruments are but one part

Multiphase System Testing in Canada for Heavy Oil Applications

of the system. The system must work as a whole and the data obtained must be consistent with the end use. The algorithms used to interpret the data collected from the separate instruments are critical to the operation of the whole. This is true whether it is a complex state-of-the-art multiphase analyzer or a two phase vessel with standard instrumentation. The combination and handling of the whole system is critical to performance in the application. Examples of Well Testing Issues - Well Z-1 Since very early in the 1950s the need for better well testing has been an issue. Results have been very good in fields where steady production flow rates with low water cuts exist. Other cases exist where two or three phase separators have been designed that work well when the oil and water separate readily. Problems begin when heavy oil, high temperatures, high sand content and very thick emulsions exist. Sounds like Canada. Typically the data taken for well testing consists of only the total flow rates of each phase. As a result of this, important opportunities for improvement have been missed. Several interesting cases will be described in the following discussion.

Figure 2 . Oil Production Well Z-1 Since the tests were not run back-to -back a true oil/water measurement was not possible to obtain. The results depended upon what well was in before the Z-1 well was placed into test. Another not obvious problem was that the well could have been placed into the treater for several days before the test was begun and a rag layer forrned which looked like water to the interface probe. As a new well came in that was hotter (the latter ones were) it is more likely that they are higher water. The oil leg used a Coriolis meter while the water leg was a turbine meter.

Figure 1. Total Production Z1 Treater & Multiphase Figure 1 shows repeatable total production of fluids for the first three tests and then increasing over a three month time frame. Figure 2 and Figure 3 show the treater results predicting increasing oil while the multiphase instead is showing more water being produced. The treater had an interesting method of dump to an interface level set by one probe which was possibly not consistent. If the same well was tested many times back-to-back the extra trapped oil would be cleared.

Figure 3 . Water Percentage Z-1 Treater & Multiphase. Examples of Well Testing Issues - SAGD Well FF Another well test sequence that was run is with a SAGD production well. There were several production issues with this well but the data is still interesting.

BENTLEY N. SCOTT, TONY HOANG

Well Purge or Unstable Production?

Figure 4. Well FF Liquid Flow Rate Figure 4 shows the flow rate versus time for this well. It did fluctuate more than expected with maintenance of pressure an issue during these times. Figure 5 shows the water percentage started out high and slowly decreased over time.

Figure 6. Well Z-3 Test 24 Hours Flow Rate

The next well test data set of interest was from Z-4 where three tests were run with the first two 2 days apart and the next the following day. After analysis of the flow patterns it was determined that the first test was not Z-4 but was mislabeled when it was transferred to the computer data base.

Figure 5. Well FF Water Cut and Liquid Density

Examples of Well Testing Issues Well Z-4 Figure 6 shows one of many wells where the well test was begun before the stabilization of the well (purge time) was established. The 24 hour t est actually had only 15.6 hours of valid data. Using just the conventional separator does not show this information and therefore the well test summary would have been taken as correct. In this specific case the average almost canceled the upsets.

Figure 7. Well Z-4 1st Day Test The data was questioned because the water percentage was far removed from the other two days of test. First it was considered that this was part of the cycle of the steamed well but further thoughts rejected this concept. Then the interval of pulsation along with the statistical correlations showed that it was not the same well.

Multiphase System Testing in Canada for Heavy Oil Applications

interest is the change in the oil leg density with cooling as it sits in the pipe cooling in the winter temperatures.

Figure 8. Well Z-4 Second Test Figure 10. Well Z-5 With Density of Both Conventional Separators Oil Leg and Multiphase Liquid Leg Conclusions Conventional methods of well testing must be reviewed and decisions made about what is valid and what is questionable about the methods and analysis of test data. In this case the method of comparison was conventional large three phase vessel with one interface probe, manual dump and read data by operator. Well test to well test variances were sometimes close and other times very wide spread. Use of real time data instead of total oil, water and gas rates/totals can bring a new dimension to well production. Statistical process control must be preceded by equipment designed to obtain more consistent information from the well test. The use of these techniques in the testing in Alberta helped to find well tests mis-labled with the wrong well number and also to visualize changing well operational conditions. What petroleum companies require is data representing the production and optimization of processes. The difficulty will be to balance the system complexity, degree of automation, required accuracy and size in order to produce the required data. The measurement industry needs to supply equipment for the entire system design, applications engineering for the site where it will be used, analyzer selection and engineering including requirements for installation and maintenance. The petroleum industrys prejudices about specific analyzers and methods would be eliminated if good data was supplied. This would help to free up talent in the industry. Involvement of the measurement industrys personnel in the measurement process will provide the additional insight

Figure 9 . Well Z-4 Third Test

Examples of Well Testing Issues Old Conventional Separator Issues Figure 10 shows the dump cycle of the oil leg in the conventional three phase separator which was in series with the multiphase system. The density from the Coriolis meter on the oil leg was datalogged so that the dump cycle could be seen beside the multiphase data. The cycle time for this separator was approximately 23 minutes. This real time data is the only record of the dump cycle of the conventional three phase oil leg. The water leg has no real time data and is a turbine meter with only a local display of totals. The temperature was 95 degrees C and the calculated density of the water using the API Ctl calculation is approximately 963 if the water is 1005 kg/m3 at 15 degrees C. This is consistent with the CCM at the highest water percentage. Also of

BENTLEY N. SCOTT, TONY HOANG

into the use of the data that will become available as these new technologies unfold. Just obtaining megabytes of data on a well performance will not be sufficient. Information will be lost without proper interpretation and statistical manipulation of the data. With modern data acquisition systems the sheer volume of data which can be obtained tends to cloud the solution to problems. New equipment and methods of measurement are opening new possibilities for collecting the right data. Many e ngineers will agree that half of the measurements made are probably unnecessary, the question is which half. The same group will agree that many of the current measurement methods and equipment are at best marginal. The validity of much of the data collected must be questioned along with the end use of the data. The goal of multiphase equipment is to optimize field recovery, reduce costs of operation and construction of facilities and provide for flexibility in response to changes required by petroleum management. This paper has attempted to demonstrate some of the issues found during a multiphase test in Canada and the problems encountered while comparing megabites of data with discrete numbers from an old system total oil and water. References
1. Kite, George, Instrumentation for Simplified Commingling and Well-Testing Operations, Journal of Petroleum Technology, July, 1964, pp. 732-738.